Me on photography: Leslie always tells me not to be bitter about digital photography and she’s right. Photography was to be my profession for many happy years, not weddings or portraits but commercial and advertising photography. In a studio with large and small products doing work for businesses. Using large and medium format film cameras and a darkroom to produce the images an art director and I crafted. But once digital photography became mainstream clients could shoot in-house, an inferior product, but cheaper and completely under their control. So over time the writing was on the wall that the investment I had made in education, equipment and darkroom lost its value and I decided to move on to commercial printing and pre-press were my color printing training was a perfect fit. As time went on I moved into the technical side of the creative world supporting everything Apple/Mac related, and that’s what I still do professionally today.

So through all this I discovered that my love of photography is the art of photography and I shoot for me and not for money. At one point I sold my original film equipment for a digital set-up and it was like the soul of photography was gone, everything I loved was gone and cold. I spent a number of years not touching a camera at all because I got no joy from it. I eventually found my artistic way and bought all new (used) medium format film equipment, and some vintage film cameras. I still had my entire darkroom set-up and because of my technical expertise in color and printing I purchased a high end film scanner and a wide format pigment printer so I could have both digital and darkroom printing capabilities, and the ability to share my film images on-line.

So I’m not bitter anymore about digital photography but thankful that it led me back to the art form of photography were it all began and I’m much happier making money in the tech world and having photography my no strings attached creative outlet.

Which brings me to the attached video of film photographer Joe Freeman, he sums up the combined art and craft of why I love film photography. He too sees it as a whole process, from film to camera to darkroom to print. Apparently he has quit smoking since this film was made, you’ll see what I mean. Enjoy!